Sing of Mockinjgays
by silvermedals
Summary: A character study on Annie Cresta. Trigger warning for (nonviolent) torture. For two challenges at Caesar's Palace.


i. home

A room the size of her closet back in Four, with dirty white tiled floors and a drain by the wall. The walls of dirt-streaked mirrors rose up several feet past her head and it smelled of mold.

But none of that was the worst part: it was the water, beating down on her head and her shoulders and her stomach, each drop hitting hard on her skin with a little sting, every one just a raindrop in a storm that brought numbness to her skin.

She loved the water, loved the feeling of cool dampness on her skin, the feeling of breaking through the surface when you thought you couldn't breathe.

Her legs were tucked to her chest, her toes dry and cold. She glanced into the mirror and saw matted dark hair - her hair - the splotches of freckles on her nose, and her bare skin, unclothed from head to toe.

She was thinner than she'd ever been before, but her belly didn't ache with the empty feeling of hunger, so she'd been fed - but not enough.

She only recalled a few things: Her name was Annie Cresta, she was sixteen and born on the twenty-seventh of March, she had won (even though all she remembered was Callum's head, severed from his neck with the clean sweep of his own sword; and the water, crashing down over the mountains and the plains), she was from District Four, and she just wanted to go home. Home was a place of warmth and serenity.

This place was a hellhouse, goosebumps adorned her skin, and she just wanted to go home. Home sounded so appealing now. Home was a place where her mother hit her across the cheek if - no, when - she talked back, home was a place where her brother teased her mercilessly about her haircut or her dress or her figure. She was so sick of it, but now she just wanted it back, the safeness of it all.

God damnit. Annie Cresta was not supposed to miss her brother. Not that useless young thirteen-year-old.

ii. sanity

There were only a few things that kept Annie sane: spinning around in circles, but that made her legs hurt; telling herself everything would be alright, but she didn't believe that; singing. It worked. It made her feel like an angel. Singing in the shower was what she'd done a million times at home until her brother told her to shut up.

 _Hush little baby, don't say a word. Mama's gonna buy you a big fat bird._

 _And if that fat old bird don't sing, Mama's gonna buy you a ruby ring._

 _And if that big red jewel don't shine, Mama's gonna buy you a ball of twine._

And then, playing from the speakers in front of her, were those piano chords. A little progression with a note or two thrown in. She'd played them over and over again at home, singing loudly, at the top of her lungs. Her parents would film her and show her the videos on the television screen with Annie curled up in one of their laps.

 _And if that ball of twine's no good, Papa's gonna make you a board of wood._

 _And if that slab of wood turns grey, Papa's gonna catch you a mockingjay-_

And then the music, the cheery little piano chords, stopped. The water turned icy cold, each drop leaving a goosebump on her skin. She started to cry, her warm, salty tears the only thing bringing any warmth to her small, shivering body.

She cried herself to sleep and decided she just wanted to die.

iii.

The water was still icy when she woke in the middle of the night to darkness. Everything hurt, and she was shivering. She didn't feel safe.

But she remembered more. She remembered the victory trumpets and being pulled up the ladder into the hovercraft, remembered her scars disappearing from her face.

Then she was here. She hadn't had her last interview. Why the hell was she being kept here? She hadn't actually done a god damned thing! Just what she was supposed to do! Win!

She cried some more, wishing she was back home. Home was a place of - safety, as she'd thought a million times over - loudness. Noise. Here, there was just the sound of her own cries and the pattering of the water.

This was a time to think, no matter how little she wanted to.

But then, a new thought. Memories came and went, but there was a new one now. She wasn't sixteen. She was twenty-one, and the last thing she remembered was the Games. Not her Games - Games she was almost in, but not the seventieth. The seventy-fifth Hunger Games.

That's why she'd been punished for singing mockingjay. After the Third Quarter Quell, mockingjays were a symbol of Katniss Everdeen, and Katniss Everdeen was a symbol of the rebellion.

She wondered if District Four (home.) had rebelled. It wasn't likely. The Career Districts were loyal to the Capitol - perhaps too loyal for their own good.

But it didn't matter! None of it mattered! Of course she wouldn't make it out alive, because she was just a pawn. And Finnick was the king.

Everybody knows that the pawns are the most important part of toppling the king. She knew she didn't want to be part of that, but she didn't have a choice. She hoped Finnick was . . . was. . .somewhere. Not the Capitol. She just prayed he wasn't being force-fed the images of her naked on a mildewy floor, miserable and hopeless.

She'd felt like that for so long and she just wanted it to stop, right now. Or, at least, to have Finnick pardoned from her hell. Her hell was exactly that - hers.

If presented the option, Annie would love to be a speaker against volunteering. But Snow would never give her that option and she didn't know the words.

The Games will break you apart, shatter you like glass a thousand times. And then when you think you've made it the number goes down, to nine hundred ninety-nine, and then you win and you're sure it's going to be okay.

But no. Then you're broken in to a million little pieces of who you thought you were and you will never be whole again.

Those were the words. She needed to get out of here and scream them across the nation. No one needed to kill themselves for these Games, not anymore. It wasn't fair.

And she just wanted it to stop. That was her purpose in life.

But right now all she wanted was to be nestled in Finnick's arms, his warm grasp.

She remembered the poem he'd read to her just a few nights ago at the interviews. Of course, wasn't everybody convinced the poem was for them?

But no. She knew. It was her. She was the recipient of the poem that called the reader an 'ethereal soul that leaves me breathless.'. That was her. She made Finnick breathless. It was kind of a beautiful thought.

She wanted that to be her legacy.

Maybe that was what she was meant to do. Her calling. Her destiny.

Or maybe she was meant to be an artist. Maybe she would be given a palette of paints in her and her fate would be women for her inside this tile-and-glass jail cell.

But no. Her fate was dying. Her goal was staying alive.

Annie Cresta was a conflicted soul, as she has been her whole life.

iv.

She didn't want this. On day three, she started to go (more) insane. She felt nauseous all day, and everything was just a whirl. She rocked her head back and forth and knew she didn't want to open her eyes. Didn't want to look at her bare body, thin as a rail, at her gaunt figure, at her broken soul showing through her sea-green eyes.

She didn't want any of that. So she just thought about things, rocking her head back and forth. It was the only thing that even felt remotely okay. Not that is was okay, but it was closer than anything else.

What kind of a sick experiment was this? She wanted her mother and her father and her brother. She wanted Finnick. She wanted everything to be okay now - as okay as it had ever been. So what? She would still be afraid of the dams, but at least she wouldn't see Callum's head falling off of his body every night when she slept.

She hurt all over and decided maybe she just wanted to give up. It wasn't worth it anymore. But how would she? How would she kill herself? She couldn't drown - that hurt too much (not that pain was an issue. Now, her life was pain) and she would cough up all the water before it did anything. Hit her head against the mirror until she just collapsed and got taken out of the experiment? Or maybe just died? No. Finnick could be watching. He didn't deserve to see that, not any of that. She was so tired of hurting the people she loved.

And if she did, she would die from the guilt a million times over. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

She didn't want anyone to see her like this: not Finnick, not her parents, not her friends. No one could see this. But maybe they were seeing it already, and that was not okay.

She screamed. Screamed because it felt good, because it occupied her, because she didn't know what else to do. And maybe that was unfair, too. She looked like she was going mad. Stop hurting everybody you love! She screamed into the chamber, knowing full well it would echo for . . . forever. That's what the room did. Echoed her screams a thousand times over until she just wanted to kill herself.

She heard a quiet thumping but that didn't make anything okay, not even remotely. Nothing would ever be okay. Not even remotely.

It was so fucked up. She was consciously thinking of what to do next - how not to hurt hem all. She didn't want to, but their sanity was more important than her sanity and her boredom. Everything would be okay, she told herself. She beat it into her brain in time with her head hitting the wall hard. Nothing was okay.

It would never be okay. She knew that deep down inside. She was crying like she had been for along as she could remember (which didn't turn out to be that long in the end).

v.

she sung to herself again, sung because the water was already cold and there was nothing more they could do to her. The chord didn't play, but she sang the mockingjay line as loudly as she could, heard it echo quieter and quieter until, a moment later, it was gone.

he was so done with it all but she just had to keep trying. Sh reminded herself this over and over while she sung the song, over and over again, louder an louder until she was screaming it at herself. And she didn't notice it at first, but the water got just a little bit colder each time until she felt like she was going to drop dead on the floor right then.

And she wanted the hot water back, hot water so hot it would steam on your skin. That's all she wanted.

So she sang it even louder, replacing 'mockingjay' with 'blue jay', and because she was smart, the water got just a little bit warmer until her throat hurt.

" I want food," she begged, knowing she wouldn't get any. No food, no water. . .this was her life. It wasn't fair and it wasn't okay but it was her life. And she just wanted it to be over.

Hitting her head against the wall in time with the chords she knew by heart. It kept her sane but somehow it was driving her insane. "I don't understand anything anymore," she breathed, her voice hoarse and rough. Nothing would ever be okay again.

No. Finnick would come to save her and it would all be okay and they would kiss and ride off into the sunset together.

But Annie Cresta's life is not a fairytale.

vi.

Day five, Annie was still praying for everything to be okay when she knew it just. . .couldn't be.

She wanted badly to just let go, break. Stop caring about who could be watching. And for a split second, she did. "I am going to die of thirst," she breathed, her voice barely a hoarse whisper.

And then, just when she figured it was time to give up, just lay down and die of thirst rather than drink the hot water raining down on her in steady staccato beats that brought pain to her arms, her chest, her back. Water came down on a clear thread. A whole bottle of it, for her. To drink.

She almost cried, but she was too strong to cry. Crying was not something she could do. It wasn't fair. Nothing was fair anymore.

So she thought about Finnick. How she would feel wrapped up in his arms, his nose nuzzling into her neck, each of his breaths a cheerful reminder that yes, she is alive and she is okay.

He kept her from going insane. Her rock, her bridge to sanity. Like he was the only thing that made Annie happy.

There's an old nursery rhyme that Annie knew only one line from: "you are half my soul", and they're words a poet would use. Annie Cresta was never a poet but singing those lines (in her haunted voice that just makes her cry) lets her feel like maybe one day she could be.

She always thought it meant Finnick. Finnick was half her soul. The thing that made her feel okay when he was there. She was going to be rescued and she would be curled up in Finnick's arms on a mattress, the days spent in the chamber just a distant memory. That was how it was going to turn out, and she told herself that, screaming it into her brain until she thought it was true even though she knew it wasn't.

She slept curled up in the fetal position, her head curled into her knees and tears staining her cheeks and only sleeping because she was so tired nothing mattered anymore - not Finnick, not the rain, not the cold of the tiles beneath her.

Nothing really made sense. Was this what going crazy felt like? She was already crazy, as the doctors had told her, but that didn't feel like this. Nightmares and disinterest were her only symptoms. This was a different crazy - the crazy where nothing makes sense anymore no matter how simple it is, where everything is just a whirlwind of hurt and confusion.

Annie Cresta never felt whole. Never felt okay. Because it wasn't going to be okay. It couldn't be, not anymore. It was day five and most of her water was gone and nothing felt okay.

Okay was a strong word, but she was pretty sure her use was justified. Hate was a stronger word still, but she just knew she hated Snow, hated Plutarch and all of the other people who'd done this to her. It just hurt.

She wanted to give up. No one was going to let her give up, but she just wanted to. That seemed like it could solve everything. Even if it couldn't, it was going to solve everything.

She woke up in a pile of pain and fury every morning and then she curled up against the wall opposite the mirror and stared at herself. The water came down harder in the mornings and gentler in the evenings, but it was still brutal and it still made her cry until she didn't have any tear ducts left.

Eventually, she abandoned the thought that she would ever be rescued, that Finnick was even watching this. Maybe Snow just turned it on when he was bored for his own sick, sick pleasure. Finnick wasn't seeing any of this, so it really didn't matter. None of it mattered.

"You know, I could starve to death in here," she shouted on day six. When would she die? Today, tomorrow, day seventeen? The water from the faucet tasted salty and metallic, so she deemed it unsafe. It wouldn't be as much of a torture chamber if her belly didn't ache and scream for food and her throat was drier than a desert.

She stared at the empty plastic jug that used to carry her water. She drank it in two days and now her throat was dry again. "I could starve to death and die of thirst. I don't care!" she shouted, louder, like no one heard her. And maybe they didn't, because she wasn't getting food and she wasn't getting water. Everything hurt and she just wanted it to be over.

This was all she knew. Over. Give up. Finnick. Screaming. Pain. Maybe soon it would be over.

vii.

Day seven was the day she started to hit her head against the wall again, because each slam, each smack of the skull against the hard tile shot pain through her body and made everything feel better. She went to bed with a sore scalp (it was the only thing that didn't burn and sting before) every night and woke up with lingering pain, which she exacerbated - why? No real reason. She thought maybe it would feel better in the end, but she had no idea how wrong she was.

Day eight was the day the lights shut off. She heard screams, breaking glass, the steady thuds of heavy-duty boots. This was an invasion of the Capitol building she was in.

"Help," she breathed, but she didn't figure anyone could hear her through the hoarseness. "Help!" she shouted a little louder.

The mirror shattered brilliantly into a million pieces. She screamed and looked up to see four tall men in black outfits standing in front of her. She stood hesitantly, shaking. "I need water," she said. She didn't know why she was trusting these people, but she was. They seemed trustable, at the very least.

They led her up the ladder into a hovercraft, where she said, "I need water." A little louder. She was wrapped up in a lavender-colored blanket.

"We'll get you water in District Thirteen," one of them explained.

Still wrapped in just the blanket, she wrapped her arms around Finnick, tears welling in both of their eyes.

But she didn't get her water fast enough, because after the few raspy words, "I love you," she fell limp in Finnick's arms and never opened her eyes again.

District Thirteen wept for her that night, and every night after.


End file.
